Bulletin N° 797
Subject :
MAKING WAR in the past, the present,
and in the future.
5
May 2018
Grenoble,
France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
We
find ourselves in the midst of a grim debacle, worldwide. I had the privilege
of meeting Joel Kovel years ago during his visit to
San Diego, California. He always exhibited a determined self-knowledge that
translated into a lucid account of events of the day. It was a lucidity that
was highly beneficial to those around him, as were his many writings.
We
shall miss him.
Scholar and Activist Joel Kovel
Dies at 81 in New York City
In New York City, antiwar activist, author and professor Joel Kovel has died at the age of 81. In the 1960s
and 1970s, Kovel was a well-known psychiatrist who
left the Albert Einstein Medical School out of his opposition to the corporate
influence over medicine. He became a prolific writer and scholar, who was also active in the movements against the Vietnam War and
nuclear proliferation. He was the author of more than 10 books about systemic
racism, ecology and global warming and other topics. Kovel went on to run for the U.S. Senate in New York with the Green Party in 1998. He
also ran for U.S. president against Ralph Nader in the Green Party primary in
2000. This is Joel Kovel, speaking on Democracy Now! in 2007 after his book “Overcoming Zionism: Creating a
Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine” was temporarily dropped by the
University of Michigan, after it caused a controversy.
The
29 items below are a warning to CEIMSA readers of the difficult times
ahead, when war, famine and chaos threaten the very survival of our species.
The criminality in the “global marketplace” today is of a magnitude that
boggles the mind and threatens to depress the spirit of authentic freedom and
democracy, managed as it is today by the cynical fabrication of received “public opinion” in the depths
of real private fears.
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
Professor
emeritus of American Studies
University
Grenoble-Alpes
Director
of Research
University
of Paris-Nanterre
Center
for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The
University of California-San Diego
a.
What Can Be Done?
Washington Enters War With Ease
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49337.htm
by Paul Craig Roberts
It
is up to Europe whether or not the Earth dies in nuclear Armageddon.
European
governments do not realize their potential to save the world from Washington’s
aggression, because the western Europeans are accustomed to being Washington’s
vassal states since the end of World War 2, and the eastern and central
Europeans have accepted Washington’s vassalage since the collapse of the Soviet
Union. Vassalage pays well if all the costs are not counted.
By
joining NATO, the eastern and central Europeans permitted Washington to move US
military presence to Russia’s borders. This military presence on Russia’s
borders gave Washington undue confidence that Russia also could be coerced into
a vassal state existence. Despite the dire fate of the two finest armies ever
assembled—Napoleon’s Grand Army and that of Germany’s Wehrmacht—Washington
hasn’t learned that the two rules of warfare are: (1) Don’t
march on Russia. (2) Don’t march on Russia.
Because
of Europe’s subservience to Washington, Washington is unlikely to learn this
lesson before Washington marches on Russia.
===========
b.
Netanyahu: Don’t Look Here, Where
We’re Shooting Children—Look at Iran
by Juan Cole
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a
notorious warmonger, serial liar and supremacist racialist who used to lead the
closest thing Israel has to a fascist party until parties even more extreme got
elected to parliament, is attempting to bamboozle the clueless Donald Trump
into getting on a war footing with Iran.
Netanyahu’s breathless announcement that there
was a potential weapons aspect to Iran’s nuclear enrichment program has been
known for a decade and a half.
===========
c.
Netanyahoo To Again Cry Wolf - But Something Bigger Is Up
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49334.htm
by Moon Of Alabama
U.S. President Trump wants to end the nuclear
agreement (pdf) with Iran and wants to eliminated Iranian forces in Syria which support the Syrian
government. Something is being prepared to make that happen. Last week General
Joseph Votel, commander of CENTCOM - the U.S.
military command for the Middle East, was in Israel. It was the first ever
visit of a CENTCOM commander to Israel which usually works with the European
command EUCOM. Yesterday former CIA director and now Secretary of State Pompeo visited Israel. A few hours later Israel bombed two
ammunition depots in Syria which are supposedly related to Iran. This was a
clear attempt to provoke Iran into some reaction.
The Israeli defense minister Lieberman just visited
Washington DC and only today came back to Israel.
===========
d.
Laughing
While Pulling the Trigger
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/04/30/laughing-while-pulling-the-trigger/
by Dennis J Bernstein
Donald Trump has shown “sadism”
against Palestinians who’ve turned to Ghandian
protests but are still being slaughtered by Israel,
says Max Blumenthal in this
interview with Dennis J. Bernstein.
Max Blumenthal is an
award-winning journalist and best-selling author. His reporting on the
brutalities of illegal Israeli occupation has set the standard for real
reporting on the issue. Blumenthal has also reported on every aspect of the
Israeli/US propaganda machine that works 24/7 to sustain the Israeli
occupation.
Blumenthal’s articles have
appeared in The New
York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, and The Nation Magazine. He also co-hosts
the podcast Moderate Rebels.
Dennis Bernstein spoke with Max
Blumenthal on April 19th.
Dennis Bernstein: I
understand you were in the Gaza Strip recently. You were there just
before the latest slaughter along the border fence [on March 30]?
Max Blumenthal: I was there
just weeks before the Great March of Return, when Israeli snipers began
shooting regular people in Gaza who marched to the border wall to protest their
open-air imprisonment. Preparations were just starting for that march. I
got the chance to interview the wife of a man who had been refused an exit
permit to get treatment for cancer. He was forced to basically sit on his
deathbed when he had a condition that could have been treated in the West Bank.
He was one of scores of people documented by the Al Mezan
Center for Human Rights in the Gaza Strip who were refused exit permits and
were forced to die. Some are wondering why people would rush the border and
risk their own lives by walking into the teeth of Israeli snipers. You have to
understand that every family in Gaza has a story like this.
DB: You tweeted a very disturbing video of Israeli soldiers shooting
from behind this electric fence. One of the shots shows them shooting and
laughing.
MB: The video was
released by Breaking the Silence, a group of former
and current Israeli soldiers who have confessed to crimes they have committed
in the field. They obtained this video, which was taken through a
sniper’s scope, showing a sniper shooting an unarmed man and then laughing and
cheering about how much they enjoyed doing that. It really speaks to the
perspective of average Israelis regarding people in the Gaza Strip. They
just don’t see them as human, especially younger Israelis who haven’t
interacted with Palestinians since the Gaza Strip was sealed off in 2006.
Israelis interact with them simply as snipers or drone operators and only a small
minority of the Jewish Israeli public sees them as human. There were some protests in Tel Aviv
against the massacres that just occurred and one of the leaders of that
protest, Tamar Sandberg, who is from a left-wing nationalist party called Meretz, was brutally demonized in mainstream Israeli media.
A lot of Israelis who do have questions about what is happening tend to
self-censor because the consequences are so high.
Dennis
J. Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the
author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden
Classroom. You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net. You can get in touch
with the author at dbernstein@igc.org.
===========
e.
Why Did the U.S. and Its Allies Bomb
Libya? Corruption Case Against Sarkozy Sheds New
Light on Ousting of Gaddafi.
https://theintercept.com/2018/04/28/sarkozy-gaddafi-libya-bombing/
by Joe Penney
Seven
years after
the popular uprising against Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and
the NATO intervention that removed him from power, Libya is extremely fractured
and a source of regional instability. But while Congress has heavily
scrutinized the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi a year after
Gaddafi’s overthrow and death, there has been no U.S. investigation into the
broader question of what led the U.S. and its allies to intervene so
disastrously in Libya.
However,
a corruption investigation into former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is opening a new window into little-known motivations
in the NATO alliance that may have accelerated the rush to oust the Libyan
dictator.
===========
f.
I Know Which
Country the U.S. Will Invade Next
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/i-know-which-country-the-u-s-will-invade-next/
by Lee Camp
By
the end of this column, it will be clear which country the United States will
invade and topple next. Or failing that, it will be clear which country our military-intelligence-industrial
complex will be aching to
invade next.
We
all want to know why America does what it does. And I don’t mean why Americans do what we do. I think that
question still will be pondered eons from now by a future professor showing his
students a video mind-meld of present-day UFC fighters booting each other in
the head while thrilled onlookers cheer (not for either of the fighters but
rather for more booting in the head).
But
we all seem to assume that America—the entity, the corporation—has some sort of
larger reasoning behind the actions it takes, the actions put forward by the
ruling elite. And almost all of us know that the reasons we’re given by the
press secretaries and caricature-shaped heads on the nightly news are the ripest,
most fetid grade of bullshit.
===========
g.
Eurasia Torn Between War and Peace
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49343.htm
by Pepe Escobar
Iran's top trading partner is China, while Tehran and Moscow have
been improving ties as the three countries move closer to cementing a solid
alliance
Two summits – the cross-border handshake that shook the world
between Kim and Moon in Panmunjom and Xi and Modi’s
cordial walk by the lake in Wuhan – may have provided the impression Eurasia
integration is entering a smoother path.
Not really. It’s all back to confrontation: predictably the
actual, working Iran nuclear deal, known by the ungainly acronym JCPOA, is at
the heart of it.
And faithful to the slowly evolving Eurasia integration
roadmap, Russia and China are at the forefront of supporting Iran.
China is Iran’s top trading partner – especially because of
its energy imports. Iran for its part is a major food importer. Russia aims to
cover this front.
Chinese companies are developing massive oil fields in Yadavaran and North Azadegan.
China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) took a significant 30% stake in a
project to develop South Pars – the largest natural gas field in the world. A $3
billion deal is upgrading Iran’s oil refineries, including a contract between
Sinopec and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to expand the decades-old
Abadan oil refinery.
===========
h.
Trump Administration
Sends a Dark,
Threatening Message to
Kim Jong Un
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49327.htm
by Alex Lockie
- The US national security adviser, John
Bolton, said he favored a "Libya model" when dealing with North
Korea.
- The former Libyan leader Muammar
Gaddafi gave up his weapons of mass destruction but fell from power when
the US and others backed an uprising against him, eventually meeting a
violent death in 2011.
- At the time, North Korea said
Gaddafi's fate showed why Pyongyang should keep its weapons.
- Bolton could have picked other
analogies to talk about denuclearizing North Korea, but knowing the
implications, he seems to have selected Libya on purpose.
President Donald Trump's
national security adviser, John Bolton, has said that the US will use Libya as
a model for North Korean denuclearization — but it may have been a dark, even
threatening message to North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un. Kim has
displayed an about-face since he and Trump traded nuclear threats
across the Pacific last year, now appearing to pursue peace and diplomacy
broadly and willingly — though there has been little follow-through on several
promises from the North Korean leader. So far, Kim has agreed to denuclearize
and seek a peace treaty with South Korea, but he has not taken verifiable steps
toward disarming. Though North Korea announced it would invite the US and South
Korea to watch
the dismantling of its nuclear test site, it has taken similar steps
before only to back out of deals later. Other steps Kim has taken, like
scrapping North Korea's special time zone, have been unilateral and
unsubstantial but enough to warrant news coverage.
===========
i.
Imperial Road to Conquest:
Peace and Disarmament Agreements
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49344.htm
by Prof. James Petras
In recent years US imperial strategy has sought to lessen the cost
of defeating and overthrowing independent countries.
The means and method are fairly straight forward. World-wide
propaganda campaigns which demonize the adversary; the enlistment and
collaboration of European and regional allies (England, France, Saudi Arabia
and Israel); the recruitment, contracting, training and arming of local and
overseas mercenaries dubbed “rebels”, or ‘democrats’; economic sanctions to
provoke domestic social tensions and political instability of the government;
proposals to negotiate a settlement; negotiations which demand non-reciprocal
concessions and which include changes in strategic weapons in exchange for
promises to end sanctions, diplomatic recognition and peaceful co-existence.
The strategic goal is disarmament in order to facilitate
military and political intervention leading up to and beyond defeat,
occupation, regime change; the impositions of a‘client
regime’ to facilitate the pillage of economic resources and the securing of
military bases, international alignment with the US empire and a military
springboard for further conquests against neighbors and independent
adversaries.
We will apply this model to recent and current examples of US
tactical and strategic empire building in diverse regions, especially focusing
on North Africa (Libya), the Middle East (Iraq, Palestine, Syria and Iran),
Asia (North Korea), and Latin America (FARC in Colombia).
===========
j.
The
White House-Mercenary Connection
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49328.htm
by Lawrence Davidson
When the United Nations
General Assembly met in December 1989, one of its most important achievements
was passage of the Mercenary Convention – the “International Convention against
the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries.” The Convention
was subsequently ratified by 35 countries and went into effect as an
international treaty in 2001. Considering that, historically, mercenaries have,
with rare exception (today’s Swiss Guard at the Vatican),
proven to be lawless killers who both spread and thrive on anarchy, this move
by the General Assembly was a prescient one. The problem was, and still is,
that many of the world’s “great powers” are remarkably short-sighted and refuse
to sign on. Among these is the United States. In the meantime the mercenary
business has become a worldwide big business. So much for the
UN Mercenary Convention.
Now, some 29 years
later, we have a president of the United States, Donald Trump, who thinks the
world’s most notorious mercenary – an American by the name of Erik Prince – can
help achieve the misguided goals of the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East.
It would seem that the answer to that perennial question, “Will they ever
learn?” is no.
===========
k.
That Collapse You Ordered...?
When civilizations
crumble,
it tends to fast-track
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49341.htm
by James Howard Kunstler
I had a fellow on my latest podcast, released Sunday,
who insists that the world population will crash 90-plus percent from the
current 7.6 billion to 600 million by the end of this century. Jack Alpert
heads an outfit called the Stanford Knowledge Integration
Lab (SKIL) which he started at Stanford University in 1978 and now
runs as a private research foundation. Alpert is primarily an engineer.
At 600 million, the living standard in the USA would be on a
level with the post-Roman peasantry of Fifth century Europe, but without the
charm, since many of the planet’s linked systems — soils, oceans, climate,
mineral resources — will be in much greater disarray than was the case 1,500
years ago. Anyway, that state-of-life may be a way-station to something more dire. Alpert’s optimal case would be a world human
population of 50 million, deployed in three “city-states,” in the Pacific
Northwest, the Uruguay / Paraguay border region, and China, that could support
something close to today’s living standards for a tiny population, along with
science and advanced technology, run on hydropower. The rest of world, he says,
would just go back to nature, or what’s left of it. Alpert’s project aims to
engineer a path to that optimal outcome.
I hadn’t encountered quite such an extreme view of the future
before, except for some fictional exercises like Cormac
McCarthy’s The Road. (Alpert, too, sees cannibalism as
one likely byproduct of the journey ahead.) Obviously, my own venture into the
fictionalized future of the World Made by Hand books depicted a
much kinder and gentler re-set to life at the circa-1800 level of living, at
least in the USA. Apparently, I’m a sentimental softie.
===========
l.
Finally
Confirmed: US Created ISIS Terror Group
Declassified
secret US government document reveals US created ISIS as a tool to overthrow
Syria's President Assad
From
the first sudden, and quite dramatic, appearance of the fanatical Islamic group
known as ISIS which was largely unheard of until a year ago, on the world's
stage and which promptly replaced the worn out and tired al Qaeda as the
world's terrorist bogeyman, we suggested that the "straight to beheading
YouTube clip" purpose behind the Saudi
Arabia-funded Islamic State was a simple one: use the Jihadists
as the vehicle of choice to achieve a political goal: depose of Syria's
president Assad, who for years has stood in the way of a critical
Qatari natural gas pipeline, one which could dethrone Russia as
Europe's dominant - and belligerent - source of energy, reaching an interim
climax with the unsuccessful Mediterranean Sea military build
up of 2013, which nearly resulted in quasi-world war.
The
narrative and the plotline were so transparent, even Russia saw right through
them. Recall
from September of last year:
===========
m.
Syrian MP For
Aleppo Laughs At BBC Propaganda
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49322.htm
Watch - Hardtalk -
Stephen
Sackur, the UK's Lord Haw
Haw interviews Fares Shehabi MP, Member of the Syrian Parliament for Aleppo.
Posted April 28, 2018
“There are 280 Brits on
their way from Douma now to Europe,
they're going back to England.”
===========
n.
'Cruise Missile Left' Complicit in American Escalation
Toward World War III
by Danny Haiphong
“Both
Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald joined the imperial chorus that the Syrian
government bore responsibility for an attack that had yet to be proven even
happened.”
“Cruise
Missile Left” Complicit in American Escalation Toward
World War III
“The cruise missile left has aligned with the
Democratic Party and the intelligence agencies against Trump and have
dropped any anti-war, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist tendencies in the
process.”
The
US-led alliance of imperial nations has waged war on Syria for eight years with
the hopes of overthrowing the independent Arab nationalist state led by
President Bashar Al-Assad. Syria was believed to be
another domino destined to fall in imperialism’s great power game to contain
any international threat to its rule. Former NATO general Wesley
Clarke revealed US plans in 2007 to use the September 11th
attacks to justify the overthrow seven countries in five years: Iraq, Iran,
Libya, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria. Most of these countries have since
been thrown into chaos by way of US imperial expansion in the Middle East and
North Africa. Clarke’s admission should be enough to clarify the Trump Administration’s
most recent airstrikes on Syria as an escalation of the broader war for US
hegemony in the region and the world.
“Imperialism wants Assad out because he stands in the way of US goals to
dominate the region.”
Yet
many who reside in the United States view the war on Syria from the lens of the
US empire. This lens is articulated by both US political parties, their foreign partners, and their
faithful corporate media servants. These expert liars claim that Assad is a
butcher and the Syrian government a brutal “regime.” They don’t talk about how
the US military occupies a large portion of Syria, coincidently in the
country’s most
resource rich region .
Also ignored is the fact that US allies such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey have
loathed the Syrian government for its decision in 2009 to construct
an independent pipeline with Iran and Iraq to transport
precious gas and oil resources to European markets. Never mind that the US,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Israel to name a few have funded and armed
hundreds of thousands of jihadist mercenaries for seven years in hopes that
they would rid of pesky Assad and his nationalist policies. Imperialism wants
Assad out because he stands in the way of US goals to dominate the region and
keep Iran, Russia and China’s rise to global prominence at bay.
Syria
is the number one target of US imperialism. The ongoing war there has the
potential to spark a confrontation between great powers unforeseen in human
history. In many ways, this confrontation has already begun. Russian forces in
Syria have daily confronted US-backed jihadists armed with American-made
weapons. US coalition strikes have killed Russian
military personnel .
Just prior to Trump’s airstrikes, seven Iranians were murdered in Syria by
Israeli fighter jets .
Russia has spent years enhancing its military capabilities in preparation for a
major confrontation with the US, whether in Syria or at its own borders with
NATO.
===========
o.
Abby Martin
Interview Critical of Israel
Blocked by
YouTube in 28 Countries
===========
p.
Where They Tell You Not to
Look
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49331.htm
by Craig
Murray
At the very beginning of the of the Skripal incident, the security services blocked by D(SMA) notice any
media mention of Pablo Miller and told the media not to look at Orbis and the Steele dossier on Trump, acting immediately
to get out their message via trusties in the BBC and Guardian. Gordon Corera, “BBC Security Correspondent”, did not name the
source who told him to say this, but helpfully illustrated his tweet with a
nice picture of MI6 Headquarters.
===========
q.
The Silence Of The Skripals
- Government Blocks Press Reports - Media Change The Record
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49324.htm
by Moon Of Alabama
There has been no recent reporting on the Skripal
case in which a British-Russian double agent and his daughter were poisoned in
Salisbury, England. There even seem to be attempts to change the public record
of the case. The British government alleged that the Skripals
were poisoned by Novichok, a deadly nerve agent, and
blamed Russia for it. There are stiill many open
questions to ask but the British media, otherwise not afraid of 'door
stepping', are curiously uninterested. We
already noted in early April that the British press was throwing
Novi-Fog™ onto the public. It was repeating outrageous and illogical
claims from "security services" but did no genuine reporting on the Skripal case.
===========
r.
Gold
Leaving US Vaults
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49298.htm
Signs of Upcoming Currency War and Armed Conflict
by Peter Korzun
|
The Turkish government has made the decision to repatriate all
of its gold reserves that are currently housed in the US Federal Reserve
System (FRS). Overall Turkey was storing 220 tonnes, valued at $25.3 billion, in the US, which it repossessed on April
19,
2018. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
toughened his stance against the US dollar (USD), declaring that international
loans should be made in gold instead of the American currency. Ankara is
seeking to reduce dependence on the US financial system. The gold’s
homecoming was partly prompted by the US threats to impose sanctions if
Turkey goes through with the signed deal to purchase Russian S-400
missile defense systems. |
This is a dramatic move reflecting an international trend.
Venezuela repatriated its gold from the
US in 2012. In 2014, the Netherlands also retrieved its 122.5 tonnes of gold that were stored in US vaults. Germany brought home 300 metric tonnes of gold stashed in the United States in 2017. It
took Berlin four years to complete the transfers. Austria and Belgium have reviewed the possibility of taking similar measures. Few people
believe the US Treasury’s assurances that the 261 million ounces (roughly 8,100
tonnes) in official gold reserves that are stored in
Fort Knox and other places are fully audited and accounted for. The Federal
Reserve has never been fully and independently
audited. The pressure for a full, independent audit of all US gold
reserves has always been resisted by the government and in Congress. Nobody knows if the gold is really there. What if the vaults turn out to be empty? It’s wiser to bring
your gold home while you can, rather than to just keep on wondering.
===========
s.
“Talking
About History Is Way to Liberate America”:
New
Memorial Honors Victims of White Supremacy
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/5/1/talking_about_history_is_way_to
===========
t.
An Ode to Eugene V. Debs and the End of Capitalism
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/an-ode-to-eugene-victor-debs-and-the-end-of-capitalism/
by Jordan Riefe
Once
upon a time, the word “socialist” wasn’t considered a dirty word. In fact, in 1912, roughly
a million people (6 percent of the popular vote), voted for a socialist for
president. He is the subject of filmmaker Yale Strom’s new documentary, “American Socialist: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs,” in
limited release in New York from April 27 through May 3 and in Los Angeles from
May 4 through May 10.
A
straight chronology using archival photos and footage, Strom’s movie tells the
story of the pioneering union leader
and founding member of International Workers of the World (IWW). Early in his
career, Debs was a member of the Democratic Party with a focus on union issues
and workers’ rights. He co-founded the American Railway Union (ARU), which
galvanized a wildcat strike over pay cuts into a nationwide Pullman Strike that landed him six months
in prison. Emerging from incarceration, he was the founding member of the
Socialist Party of America and ran for president five times between 1900 and
1920. The first political figure jailed for anti-war speech, Debs was sentenced
to 10 years in prison for urging people to resist the military draft of World
War I.
He
told the court: “Your Honor, years ago, I recognized my kinship with all living
beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on
earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in
it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a
soul in prison, I am not free.”
u.
From: Jim O'Brien via H-Pad
Sent: Monday, 30 April, 2018
https://www.historiansforpeace.org/
Links
to Recent Articles of Interest
"What
Was the Vietnam War About?"
By Christian Appy,
New York Times, posted March 26.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/opinion/what-was-the-vietnam-war-about.html
The author teaches
history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has written extensively
on the Vietnam War.
"Renaming
the 1948 War: Partition, Dispossession, and Fragmentation" by Richard Falk, ZNet, posted March 25.
http://imemc.org/article/renaming-the-1948-war-partition-dispossession-and-fragmentation/
The author is a
professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University.
"Welcome
to the Dick Cheney Administration" by
Stephen M. Walt. Foreign
Policy, posted March 23.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/23/welcome-to-the-dick-cheney-administration/
The author teaches
international relations at Harvard University.
===========
v.
From: "World
BEYOND War" <info@worldbeyondwar.org>
Sent: Monday, 30 April, 2018
Subject: Put Antiwar Billboards in Washington, D.C.
https://plus.google.com/117980860146211902994
|
===========
w.
From:
"Mark Crispin
Miller" <markcrispinmiller@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 2 May, 2018
Subject: [MCM] The
cancer-industrial complex, explained
Wall
Street Admits Curing Diseases Is Bad for Business
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/wall-street-admits-curing-diseases-is-bad-for-business/
by Lee Camp
Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO
Lloyd Blankfein examines a report on his company by
the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations before a 2010 hearing on
Wall Street investment banks and the financial crisis. (AP)
Goldman Sachs has
outdone itself this time. That’s saying a lot for an investment firm that both
helped cause and then exploited a global economic meltdown, increasing its own
wealth and power while helping to boot millions of Americans out of their homes.
But now Goldman Sachs
is openly saying in financial reports that curing people of terrible diseases
is not good for business.
I wish this were a
joke. It sounds like a joke. In fact, I’ll show you later that it used to be
one of my favorite jokes. But first, the facts.
In a recent report, a
Goldman analyst asked clients:
“Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Salveen
Richter wrote: “The
potential to deliver ‘one-shot cures’ is one of the most attractive aspects of
gene therapy. … However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with
regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies. … While this proposition
carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a
challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.”
===========
x.
From: "Mark
Crispin Miller" <markcrispinmiller@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 2 May, 2018
http://markcrispinmiller.com
Where do
"we" get off condemning Assad, or ANY other head of state, for
butchery?
First Bomb the Wedding, Then Bomb the Rescue Workers
by William Boardman
(29 April 18)
Textbook terrorist tactic and war crime – who
cares?
n an
impoverished, remote mountain village in northwest Yemen, the wedding
celebration was still going strong when the first airstrike hit around 11 p.m.
on April 22. The Saudi attacks killed the bride firstdeath
toll to “at least 33 people.” The nearest hospital was miles away in
Hajjah. The only two cars in the village were knocked
out by the bombing. The first casualties reaching the hospital arrived by
donkey after midnight. The hospital, one of 13 in Yemen run by MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres
The injured had mainly lost limbs and suffered shrapnel wounds. At least
three patients required amputation, including two brothers, who each lost a
foot. By early morning, many residents of Hajjah had
come to the hospital to donate blood. In two hours, 150 bags were collected to
treat the wounded.
This was yet another American-sponsored war crime. The US has committed war crimes of this
sort all on its own since 2009 in Pakistan (and subsequently in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere). The US president surely knew such attacks
are war crimes under international law as well as US law, but who was going to
hold him accountable (any more than anyone has held his predecessor or
successor accountable)?
===========
y.
From: Mark Crispin Miller markcrispinmiller@gmail.com
Sent:
Wednesday, 2 May, 2018
http://markcrispinmiller.com
48
is just too many . . . .
Saudi Arabia criticised for 48 beheadings in four months of 2018
Rights group
says half of those executed by ‘notorious’ system were on non-violent charges
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants to soften Saudi Arabia’s image.
Saudi Arabia has
executed 48 people in the past four months, half of them on non-violent drug
charges, Human Rights Watch has said.
The US-based group urged the kingdom
to improve what it called a “notoriously unfair criminal justice system”. Saudi
Arabia has one of the world’s highest rates of execution: suspects convicted of
terrorism, homicide, rape, armed robbery and drug trafficking face the death
penalty. Rights experts have repeatedly raised concerns about the fairness of
trials in the kingdom, which is governed by a strict form of Islamic law. The
government says the death penalty is a deterrent for further crime.
Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East
director, said: “It’s bad enough that Saudi Arabia executes so many people, but
many of them have not committed a violent crime. Any plan to limit drug
executions needs to include improvements to a justice system that doesn’t provide
for fair trials.”
===========
z.
The Ghosts of
'New Democrats'
Are Haunting
Us
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/will-democrats-live-up-to-their-name/
Then-President
Barack Obama talks with former President Bill Clinton and senior adviser
Valerie Jarrett at the White House in July 2010. Obama was meeting with
business leaders to discuss new ways to create jobs and strengthen the
partnership between the public and private sectors to make new investments in
the clean energy industry. (Pete
Souza / White House)
Twenty-five
years ago, the so-called New Democrats were triumphant. Today, their political
heirs are eager to prevent the Democratic Party from living up to its name. At
stake is whether democracy will have a chance to function. A fundamental battle
for democracy is in progress—a conflict over whether to reduce the number of superdelegates
to the party’s national convention in 2020, or maybe even eliminate them
entirely. That struggle is set to reach a threshold at a party committee
meeting next week and then be decided by the full Democratic National Committee
before the end of this summer.
To
understand the Democratic Party’s current internal battle lines and what’s at
stake, it’s important to know how we got here. After a dozen years of awful
Republican presidencies, Bill Clinton and running mate Al Gore proved to be just
the ticket for the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. Clinton settled into
the White House in early 1993 as the leader of pathbreaking
New Democrats. Many media outlets hailed him as a visionary who had overcome
left-leaning liberalism to set the party straight.
==========
zz.
The CIA Got Macron
Elected,
It Looks Like They
Wrote His Big US Speech Too
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49345.htm
by Gilbert Doctorow
A study in the
illegal intervention in US political life by our intelligence services
In this
essay, I offer a detailed textual analysis of the speech which French President
Emmanuel Macron delivered before the Joint Session of Congress, Washington,
D.C. on 25 April 2018, in line with the kind of textual analysis which I
performed on major political documents signed by heroic East European freedom
fighters in 2007 and 2009, which were in fact authored by US intelligence
operatives.
I maintain
here that a substantial part of Macron’s speech was either written by or
coordinated closely with these same intelligence services for the purpose of
exerting maximum influence on domestic US politics by reinforcement of centrist
American predispositions from respected foreign actors. It is also essential to
explain how M. Macron became president of France in 2017 with the connivance of
these same intelligence services. I will attempt to do that in the second part
of the essay.
I freely
admit that my argumentation is circumstantial and relies heavily on hunches
that today are sagely phrased as “most likely” scenarios. But whereas the “most
likely” reasoning of Theresa May is used to justify unprecedented verbal
attacks on Russia and military attacks on the sovereign state of Syria, my
reasoning, if unpersuasive, has no other consequence than to lose a reader here
or there.
On the other
hand, if I indeed have touched gold, as I believe is the case, then the
“special relationship” between the United States and France that Emmanuel
Macron celebrated in his speech to Congress assumes a far more sinister nature
than anyone in our mainstream and alternative media has so far identified.
zzz.
Syria &
Iran Prove There’s No Chance For North Korean Peace
(Korea Summit Press Pool via AP)
https://southfront.org/syria-iran-prove-theres-no-chance-for-north-korean-peace/
by Brandon Smith
There is a saying in geopolitics that peace summits are generally a
perfect time to prepare for war. This thinking stems from the military
philosophy of Sun Tzu, who believed that when a nation is weak it is important
to appear strong, and when a nation is at its most dangerous it is important to
appear weak or “diplomatic.” Sun Tzu also often praised the virtues of
distraction and sleight of hand, not only in war, but in politics as well.
I would note that Sun Tzu and the Eastern “sleight of hand” methodology
is not only a mainstay of Chinese as well as North Korean thought, but also
required reading for Western covert intelligence agencies. It is important to
fully understand this methodology when examining the East vs. West paradigm,
because almost everything you see and hear when it comes to relations with
countries like China and North Korea is theater. Their governments have hidden
schemes, our governments have hidden schemes and the globalists manipulating
both sides have plans that trump everything else.
Keep all of this in mind when you hear about the sudden and almost
inexplicable announcements of peace summits with North Korea in May or June
between Pyongyang and the Trump administration.
Looking at the scenario purely from the perspective of political motive,
it’s difficult to discern why Trump has been so obsessed with North Korea since
he first entered office. North Korea has always had nuclear capability as well
as the ability to deploy those nukes in one form or another against the U.S.
North Korea has also always been involved in further nuclear testing and
missile testing. The idea that such testing today is somehow a “violation” of
arbitrary international standards and etiquette is absurd. Almost every nation
in the world is engaged in military expansion and development.
Then again, if one only looks at surface rhetoric and policy, it is
difficult to discern why the Trump White House is equally obsessed with Syria
and the Assad regime. One of the primary driving forces behind the Trump
election campaign was the idea that this was a candidate that would break from
establishment elites in the tradition of perpetual war. Trump’s criticisms of
past presidents and their handling of Iraq and the Middle East was supposed to represent a sea change in American policies
of aggression. Instead, his cabinet is now laced with the cancers of
neo-conservative warhawks (fake conservatives) and
globalist banking proponents.
The U.S. was supposedly mere months away from completely removing its
military presence from Syria. Yet a well timed “chemical
attack” on a Damascus suburb, blamed on Assad, gave Trump a perfect
rationale for keeping troops in the region as well as escalating the use of
force through missile bombardment. The original claim under President Obama was
that we were in Syria because of the growing threat of ISIS (a terrorist
movement supported
by western covert intelligence). Now, the new enemy is the target
globalists always intended — the Syrian government itself.
===========
zzzz.
African
Issues: What Is Going On In Algeria, Libya, Sudan
https://southfront.org/african-issues-what-is-going-on-in-algeria-libya-sudan/
A site of the Il-76 crash in Algeria
by Evgeny Satanovsky
Events in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia’s confrontation with
Iran are by no means exhausted in what is happening presently in the Middle
East. The situation, observed in the Maghreb and the Horn of Africa, are no
less important for understanding the situation in the region.
The present article, based on materials from A. Bystrov,
is a look at what is going on in Algeria, Libya and the Sudan.